Last night, a mysterious dress appeared on Tumblr that caused everyone on the internet to lose their minds. Then, everyone on the internet decided to colorsplain the situation. This is one of those.

Friends, this is a case of where your brain is perceiving the light source. The reason this picture is causing so much confusion is that the light source ON the dress is unclear. The background behind the dress is blown out, overexposed fluorescent light, while the light ON the dress is one of two things. Lie down for a second on the nearest comfy couch and let's talk.

Your brain is seeing the dress as blue and black because it's assuming the dress is being lit by a warm light, hence the gold or brown overtones on the "black" area of the dress:

However, this light source isn't actually shown in the photo (and definitely isn't affecting the background, which is overexposed and cold-toned), so people who see the dress as gold and white are SUPER confused by this approach.